Hydrocarbon emissions have become a major concern with environmental agencies throughout the world. One way to reduce hydrocarbon emissions from automobiles is to prevent hydrocarbon vapor emissions through fuel lines and vapor lines. In the past, these fuel lines have been formed from nylon which is particularly strong, but has relatively poor hydrocarbon vapor barrier characteristics. A solution to this has been to provide a laminated fuel line having one or more layers that provide improved barrier characteristics laminated to nylon. Fuel lines, as opposed to vapor lines, also require an inner conductive layer to permit dissipation of static charge created as the fuel passes through the fuel line.
Most of the barrier layers tend to be fluorinated hydrocarbons such as ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE) and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE). The problem with these barrier layers is they do not adhere well to nylon. Plasma treatment of the fluorinated hydrocarbon polymers has been employed and is successful to some extent, but still suffers problems with delamination and further, is relatively expensive. Noone et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,383,087 discloses using an outer nylon layer bonded to an inner barrier layer by a compatibilizing adhesive. Unfortunately, in practice it is very difficult to get both the nylon and the fluorinated polymer to both adhere to the compatibilizing adhesive.